


gingerly

by TheFreakWithTheWings



Series: Word a Day [14]
Category: Bleach
Genre: Age Regression/De-Aging, Gen, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-03
Updated: 2019-02-03
Packaged: 2019-10-21 21:40:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 526
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17650373
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheFreakWithTheWings/pseuds/TheFreakWithTheWings
Summary: gingerly: very cautiously and carefullyThis time, their hopes didn't lay in an incomprehensible, possibly non-Euclidian machine to slip an assassin between the currents of time, probably using the Dangai, in order to unravel their entire future.Instead, they were going to hope that Orihime's strange ability to restructure reality to her own desires would be precise enough to send her back to the desired time point while at the same time being gentle enough not to completely destroy reality in the process.





	gingerly

Sometime after Aizen emerged victorious and the remaining members of the resistance went into hiding, they came up with a plan for Urahara to build a time machine. Someone would get sent back to before Aizen ever got his hands on the second hogyoku, and they would kill him before he ever became immortal. Ideally, the person would be someone who was already well-known to the Gotei and trustworthy (i.e. not wanted for treason and human experimentation), like Rukia's older brother, but most of the older Shinigami were wiped out in the attack that took out Urahara.

Of course, being one of Urahara's desperate, last minute plans, it bought the survivors enough time to come up with a viable back up plan before Aizen's forces found them again. This time, their hopes didn't lay in an incomprehensible, possibly non-Euclidian machine to slip an assassin between the currents of time, probably using the Dangai, in order to unravel their entire future. 

Instead, they were going to hope that Orihime's strange ability to restructure reality to her own desires would be precise enough to send her back to the desired time point while at the same time being gentle enough not to completely destroy reality in the process. Training for the task involved learning the history of Soul Society, as no one was sure when she would end up, and also increasing her control over her reiatsu so that she didn't accidentally overshoot and end up in a time before Aizen was even born. Or died - no one was quite sure whether he was born in Soul Society or in the Living World.

However, there was only so much training that they could put Orihime through before it became stalling instead of preparing. Once that day arrived, Orihime exchanged tearful hugs with every single person that was still alive - whether they wanted to give hugs or not - and, with one calm inhale to steady herself, gingerly launched herself into the flow of time.

Later, she would be unable to describe exactly what her experience as she flew through time was, but then anyone who bothered to ask was either looking to be told a story or trying to make another time machine. For the first, she simply said that time was a lot like a river. For the second, well, Orihime generally took care of them.

But that wasn't important right now. What was important was that when Orihime was punted out of the time stream, she landed on someone.

"I am so sor-" she began, scrambling off the person. Years of battle had her switching tracks in the blink of an eye once she saw that the person she had landed on was Aizen. "I reject!"

Her recent training had her concentrating on using her ability to manipulate time, so when she used them on Aizen, she ended up rejecting his personal timeline. When her shield faded, instead of the intimidating monster who had hunted her and her friends for years, there was a two year old child surrounded by a mass of black and white fabric - the Captain's uniform that no longer fit him.

Whoops.


End file.
